Vance targets foreign labour in US jobs pitch
Washington: US Vice President JD Vance has intensified the Trump administration’s America-first employment pitch, saying companies seeking workers must begin by training and hiring US citizens rather than turning to foreign labour.
Speaking at a steel facility in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, Vance linked restrictions on immigration with higher wages and greater employment opportunities for American-born workers.
“What we did is we told American corporations that if you wanted new workers, you got to start by training and hiring your own countrymen,” Vance said.
The Vice President did not identify any legal visa programme, including the H-1B skilled-worker programme, during his remarks. Nor did he mention India or Indian professionals.
His comments, however, placed foreign workers alongside illegal immigration, outsourcing and unfair trade practices in an argument about the decades-long decline of American manufacturing.
Vance accused sections of corporate America of moving production overseas to benefit from lower wages. He also said some US workers had been required to train foreign replacements before losing their jobs.
“They’re going to ship your jobs overseas, and they’re going to let anybody who wants to come into the United States of America with no vetting and no care being replaced by foreign workers,” he said.
Vance cited the case of a computer programmer named Kevin Flanagan, who, he said, lost his job at a bank and was required to train a foreign replacement to receive severance benefits.
The Vice President said the administration was rewarding companies that invested in the United States while using tariffs against businesses that shifted manufacturing abroad.
“We were willing to tell the corporations that wanted to hire foreign labor, that if you wanted to bring that stuff back into the United States, you were going to pay a big fat tariff for doing so,” he said.
Vance also claimed the administration’s immigration enforcement had produced net outward migration and changed the distribution of employment gains.
“Do you know that all net job growth over the past 18 months went to native born Americans?” he said.
Vance broadened his attack later in the address, accusing Democrats of defending foreign nationals at the expense of US workers and taxpayers.
“Whether it’s child predators, Somali fraudsters, foreign gang members, or even visa fraudsters who are working to undercut American wages and steal from American taxpayers,” he said, “the Democrats know who they stand for.”
Vance said the administration’s approach was already contributing to manufacturing growth. He claimed the sector had added 229,000 jobs in 2026 and that manufacturing wages had risen 4.2 per cent year-on-year. He also announced a $1 billion investment by Cleveland-Cliffs in its Middletown steel operations.
